Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters’ Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme’s industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society’s failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.

‘This is top-notch research on an important topic in English and American history, full of well-told and fascinating stories. It takes a refreshing look at both industrial and agricultural history in England and America and illustrates how their cultural and economic relationship took many forms in the nineteenth century.’
William E. Van Vugt, Calvin University

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Martin Crawford is Emeritus Professor of Anglo-American History at Keele University